I’ve been learning some about rabies and learned about rabies causing hydrophobia. This is just a theory, I’m not saying I know anything about this topic to be knowledgeable, but if we could get someone with rabies to not fear water, could they survive?
The efficacy of vaccines usually declines over time after administration. The immune system starts to “forget” how to fight a pathogen it doesn’t encounter. It doesn’t completely forget, but it puts the treatment data way back in the archives. So when it encounters the real deal, it can take quite a while to boot up production of antibodies. It also varies by the type of disease.
This is fine for some slow diseases ( which is why sometimes a single vaccination can suffice ), but can be risky if the disease progresses faster than the immune system can ramp up the defenses.
Administering the vaccine as soon as possible after suspected exposure to deadly or highly contagious diseases simply helps the immune system to get the necessary blueprints to get in the fight quicker.
Administering the vaccine before any exposure at regular, long intervals is done to decrease the baseline risk. Sometimes you don’t know you have been infected. Many diseases are not only transmitted by dramatic, obvious vectors. In those cases, it’s definitely better to have some old defense than none at all.
I’m trying to wrap my head around something that appears far more complex than I first thought. I don’t understand the explosive elements and chemistry that drives ash production and the heat to create the eruption column. I’m aware of how molten metal behaves in a foundry crucible with flux and degassing required. So I...
In this case, a very strong eruption ejects kids of super hot gas and rock upwards, like when you open a shaken bottle. After some time, pressure will decrease, and gravity will start dragging things down again.
Unlike a regular soda bottle, heat is significant. Hot gas rises in the atmosphere against gravity. During this rise, it loses energy ( so it cools down). When it reaches a high enough temperature where the lifting momentum is overcome by gravity, it starts falling again.
As the top starts to fall while there still is more material below in the column, the column gets compressed. As the center of the column is the hottest part, it still pushes material upwards. So the colder material falling from the top is pushed outwards, widening the column a bit. It also encounters the cold air outside and starts cooling even more itself, falling ever faster in the outside “ring” of the column. It still is only “cool” compared to the rising inner column, still thousands of degrees. Also, all the light glasses will have moved further up the atmosphere and either fall slower or not at all. This is where the long term effects such as your mentioned ash fall/ rain comes from. So most of the rapidly falling material that then form pyroclastic flows are actually fairly heavy liquids/solids and heavier-than-air gasses. They only seem so light and fast inside a pyroclastic flow because if their immense temperature and contained energy.
However, sooner or later the falling material encounters the ground, a solid obstacle. As the inner column is densely filled with super hot, probably still rising fresh material, the only possible way is outwards. And with continuous pressure from above from all the falling material, the material needs to move out of the way very rapidly. This is not dissimilar from how water behaves that flows from a bottle or faucet and hits solid ground. But a pyroclastic flow is a bit more viscous, and still very hot. While moving outwards, it quickly has to push away the cool, resting atmosphere. The only way for the air is to step aside upwards. Now, as the cold air likes to stay close to the ground and was compressed, it forms a seemingly paradoxical barrier layer of cold, dense air above the pyroclastic flow, pressing down on it, even squeezing it further outwards. This together with it’s own viscosity means there’s surprisingly little turbulence between the two layers, with the hot flow continuing to rush along below the cold barrier layer instead of mixing and rising through it upwards. If this interests you, look up inversion layers: they are a normal phenomenon in regular weather as well, especially winter time, and can sometimes even last many days.
Consider that ash columns reach many km in altitude, filled with many tons of material. It doesn’t all fall slowly at the same time. It’s literally rock falling from high atmosphere to the ground, carried by heavier-than-air gasses that also want to sit below the atmosphere.
So, I learned in physics class at school in the UK that the value of acceleration due to gravity is a constant called g and that it was 9.81m/s^2. I knew that this value is not a true constant as it is affected by terrain and location. However I didn’t know that it can be so significantly different as to be 9.776 m/s^2 in...
This doesn’t change the issue presented by OP. Sea level is not level across the world. In fact there are much larger differences than most people expect. The Earth is not perfectly round. Earth rotation causes the equator to be affected by a centrifugal force, making it wider there ( more distance to earth core means less gravity ) than at the poles. Overall, gravity at Earth surface level varies by 0.7%, ranging from 9.76 in Peru to 9.83 in the Arctic Ocean, but it’s absolutely not linear. In addition, the Earth is full of gravity anomalies. These cause localized dips and spikes in gravity. Two of the big dogs lips lie in the Indian ocean and the Caribbean. Because water is fluid, sea level is very much affected by local gravity (as well as other factors such as air pressure, salinity, temperature…). Which is also why the moons gravity can cause tides. The permanently lower gravity on these anomalous spots mean that the average sea level here is lower than it would be on a perfect sphere. This difference can be up to two meters in sea level.
Once I started having to deal with incoming applications, I quickly realized it’s impossible not to be influenced by the info you see. There are specific names that are culturally connoted with being stupid and are used in many jokes. A female name will get special consideration, because I work in a male dominated field and we try to improve the balance. But I hate all that. I want to work with the best colleagues I can get, that’s my sole motivation. So their hard and soft skills matter, but I don’t care about their private life. Sure, how you spend your private time can give indications on your character, but I quickly found I’m loaded with prejudices, and they have been plain wrong more often than not.
Our company sadly doesn’t sanitize applications by default, but I insist on it for the resumes I have to assess, and I managed to convince a couple other team leads as well. Maybe it’ll spread. I let them remove any personal info. Names, age, gender, photos, addresses… Luckily it has become uncommon to include hobbies or family info, so that rarely is in there in the first place, otherwise remove it as well. I’m hiring you to do a job, it’s not a sympathy or friendship application.
And the written application is only the very first selection step any way. If your credentials are sufficient and you manage to avoid egregious typos and lexical mistakes, you’ll have to deal with the interview process anyway. That’s where I’ll see how you present yourself in person and how you communicate, which are important soft skills in my industry.
I had the privately most introverted antisocial folks end up being very attentive and professional at client interactions, and extroverted “volunteer-for-everything” folks being arrogant and selfish at teamwork.
This is probably a dumb question, but if we eliminate the hydrophobia caused by rabies, would it increase the survival rate of active rabies?
I’ve been learning some about rabies and learned about rabies causing hydrophobia. This is just a theory, I’m not saying I know anything about this topic to be knowledgeable, but if we could get someone with rabies to not fear water, could they survive?
Volcanic Pyroclastic flows: What are some good analogies to understand the full spectrum of causes?
I’m trying to wrap my head around something that appears far more complex than I first thought. I don’t understand the explosive elements and chemistry that drives ash production and the heat to create the eruption column. I’m aware of how molten metal behaves in a foundry crucible with flux and degassing required. So I...
Does everyone learn the same gravity in school or is it different everywhere?
So, I learned in physics class at school in the UK that the value of acceleration due to gravity is a constant called g and that it was 9.81m/s^2. I knew that this value is not a true constant as it is affected by terrain and location. However I didn’t know that it can be so significantly different as to be 9.776 m/s^2 in...
Nearly 20% of workers have changed their name on a resume because of discrimination concerns, says new report ( www.cnbc.com )
A recent survey on hiring practices led by hiring software company Greenhouse found "pretty sobering stats" about discrimination in hiring processes.